THE  NEMESIS 
OF  MEDIOCRITY 


RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM 


c 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  MEDIOCRITY 


LTHE  NEMESIS 
OF  MEDIOCRITY 


By 


RALPH  ADAMS  CRAM 


L1TT.D.,  LL.D. 


BOSTON 
MARSHALL  JONES  COMPANY 

MDCCCCXIX 


Copyright,  iqi?,  iqiq 
By  Marshall  Jones  Company 

All  rights  reserved 

First  printing,  December,  191 7 
Second  printing,  May,  191  8 
Third  printing,  March,  19 19 


PRINTED     BY 
THE    UNIVERSITY    PRESS,     CAMBRIDGE,     U.  S.  A. 


THE  NEMESIS  OF  MEDIOCRITY 


THE  NEMESIS  OF 
MEDIOCRITY 

"Let  us  now  praise  famous  men,  and  our  fathers  that 
begat  us.  The  Lord  hath  wrought  great  glory  by  them 
through  his  great  power  from  the  beginning.  Such  as  did 
bear  rule  in  their  kingdoms,  men  renowned  for  their  power, 
giving  counsel  by  their  understanding,  and  declaring 
prophecies.  Leaders  of  the  people  by  their  counsels,  and 
by  their  knowledge  of  learning  meet  for  the  people;  wise 
and  eloquent  in  their  instructions.  Such  as  find  out 
musical  tunes  and  recited  verses  in  writing.  Rich  men 
furnished  with  ability,  living  peaceably  in  their  habita- 
tions: All  these  were  honoured  in  their  generations  and 
were  the  glory  of  their  times."  —  ecclesiasticus:  xliv. 

A  LREADY  the  revelations  of  war  have  cast 
ZA  their  searching  and  mordant  light 
^  •*  on  all  that  was  brought  over  to  us 
out  of  the  last  century,  and  nothing  is  as  it 
seemed  in  those  far  and  half  mythical  days 
when  there  was  no  war  and  we  maintained 
a  serene  content  well  grounded  on  its  broad 
base  of  solid  accomplishment.  It  was  a 
proud,  even  an  august  possession,  this  hoard 
of  coined  wealth  such  as  men  had  never 
gathered  before,  made  up  as  it  was  of  all 
the  broad  and  shining  counters  minted  out 
of  Renaissance,  Reformation  and  Revolu- 
tion, and  with  this  vast  reserve  our  solvency 

[i] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

seemed  beyond  suspicion.  The  touch  of 
war  is  like  that  of  the  magician  in  the 
fairy  tale,  and  enough  of  the  bright  counters 
already  have  turned  to  dried  and  worthless 
leaves  to  make  us  wonder  if  in  the  end  a 
single  coin  may  remain  to  us,  honest  gold, 
undipped  and  undebased. 

Some  day  the  count  of  these  revelations 
will  be  made  up,  but  now  the  tale  is  not  fully 
told,  and  we  wait,  aghast,  as  each  day  some 
old  truism  crumbles  into  folly,  some  dogma 
shows  thin  and  evanescent,  some  fundamen- 
tal principle  of  modernism  reveals  itself  as 
a  superstition  as  groundless  as  those  we  long 
ago  had  cast  away.  Meanwhile  "  here  we 
have  no  continuing  city;"  the  sands  slide 
under  our  feet,  and  we  touch  nothing  tan- 
gible as  we  reach  out  for  support  in  a  dark- 
ness that  shows  no  sign  of  breaking. 

Amongst  these  revelations  there  is  none 
more  unexpected,  more  baffling  in  the  fact 
of  its  existence  or  broader  in  its  ramifica- 
tions, than  the  loss  of  leadership.  To-day, 
when  men  cry  aloud,  as  never  before,  for 
guides,  interpreters,  leaders,  there  is  none  to 
answer ;  in  any  category  of  life,  issuing  out  of 
any  nation.  None,  that  is,  that  matches  in 
power  the  exigency  of  the  demand.    There 

[2] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

are  those  that  honestly  try  to  lead;  there 
are  those  that  increasingly  lead  under  the 
grim  schooling  of  war,  slowly,  painfully 
and  towards  an  end  still  obscure  and  unde- 
termined. Arduously  they  struggle  to  build 
up  a  following,  to  see  the  insane  life  of  the 
moment  and  see  it  whole;  to  keep  ahead  of 
the  whirlwind  of  hell-let-loose  and  direct  an 
amazed  and  disordered  society  along  paths 
of  ultimate  safety.  And  always  the  event 
outdistances  them,  the  phantasmagoria  of 
chaos  whirls  bewilderingly  beyond,  and 
either  they  follow  helplessly  or  are  sucked 
into  the  rushing  vacuum  that  comes  in  the 
wake  of  progressive  destruction.  In  the  im- 
mediate necessity  of  war  one  august  general 
after  another  receives  command,  plays  his 
part  for  a  day,  and  disappears,  marked  by 
comparative  failure  if  not  by  demonstrated 
incompetence.  Potential  reputations  break 
down  and  are  forgotten,  in  Mesopotamia, 
Gallipoli,  Galicia,  Roumania,  theTrentino, 
the  Carso,  Champagne,  the  Argonne:  on 
the  North  Sea,  in  the  Channel,  through  the 
Mediterranean.  The  battle  fronts  east,  west, 
south,  bury  more  than  the  bodies  of  dead 
soldiers,  for  reputations  are  interned  with 
them  in  a  quick  and  merciful  oblivion. 

r  3 1 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

Still,  fate  is  a  whimsical  arbiter,  whose 
operations  are  unaccountable,  and  any  day 
may  appear  the  great  leaders  thus  far  coldly 
refused  to  the  desperate  and  death-locked 
armies,  but  there  is  little  hope  for  a  like 
mercy  in  statesmanship.  The  years  just  be- 
fore the  war  were  tumultuous  with  the  petty 
machinations  of  the  degenerate  political  and 
diplomatic  successors  of  the  masterly  ma- 
nipulators of  destiny  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Noble  or  cynical,  they  were  leaders, 
these  men  of  a  dead  generation:  Metter- 
nich,  Cavour,  Disraeli,  Bismarck,  Glad- 
stone, Gambetta,  Lincoln,  and  they  have  left 
few  successors,  either  to  their  glory  or  their 
infamy.  Can  there  be  honest  comparison  be- 
tween the  political  leaders  in  Great  Britain 
to-day  and  Peel,  Palmerston,  Gladstone,  Dis- 
raeli and  Salisbury,  between  the  flotsam  and 
jetsam  of  French  parliamentary  turbulence 
and  Thiers,  Gambetta,  de  Freycinet?  Con- 
trast the  men  now  controlling  the  destinies 
of  Italy  with  those  of  the  epoch  of  the  Lib- 
eration; match  the  present  politicians  of 
Germany  with  those  to  the  front  from  1870 
to  1895;  place  in  one  column  the  members 
of  President  Wilson's  Cabinet,  the  leaders 
in  Congress,  the  Governors  of  the  several 

[4] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

States,  and  in  the  other  the  American  politi- 
cal forces  from  i860  on  for  the  space  of  a 
generation.  Whether  you  like  them  all  or 
not,  these  men  of  an  elder  age,  one  thing  you 
must  concede,  and  that  is  their  capacity  and 
their  dominance  as  leaders. 

So  one  might  traverse  the  fields  of  reli- 
gion, philosophy,  literature,  art,  education, 
matching  each  man  who  claims  or  is  ac- 
corded priority,  with  those  of  the  immediate 
past  whose  historical  place  is  now  as  assured 
as  was  their  acceptance  during  their  lives. 
Long  after  the  contemporary  list  finds 
"finis"  written  beneath,  the  other  calendar 
continues  until  its  length  is  greater  by  ten- 
fold. Not  only  this,  but  there  is  unques- 
tioned difference  in  quality;  as  between 
Harmsworth  and  Gladstone,  Bryan  and 
Cleveland,  Benedict  XV  and  Leo  XIII, 
Wells  and  Emerson,  Ornstein  and  Brahms. 
The  leaders  that  once  were,  found  their  fol- 
lowing through  comprehension  of  their  own 
force  and  dominance,  those  that  are  now, 
faute  de  mieux,  and  because  there  are  no 
others  to  lead. 

Inch  by  inch  the  valleys  are  being  filled 
and  the  mountains  brought  low.  More  ar- 
duously the  man  stronger  than  another  lifts 

[5] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

above  the  level  uniformity;  a  few  still  con- 
tinue, lasting  over  from  an  earlier  genera- 
tion, but  in  a  year  or  two  they  also  will 
pass,  and  few  indeed  are  rising  to  take  their 
place.  Meanwhile  "  the  hungry  sheep  look 
up,  and  are  not  fed,"  for  the  soul  of  sane 
man  demands  leadership,  and  in  spite  of  aca- 
demic aphorisms  on  Equality,  a  dim  con- 
sciousness survives  of  the  fundamental  truth 
that  without  strong  leadership  democracy 
is  a  menace;  without  strong  leadership 
culture  and  even  civilization  will  pass 
away. 

Now  as  always  the  great  mass  of  men  look 
for  the  master-man  who  can  form  in  definite 
shape  the  aspirations  and  the  instincts  that 
in  them  are  formless  and  amorphous;  who 
can  lead  where  they  are  more  than  willing 
to  follow,  but  themselves  cannot  mark  the 
way;  who  can  act  as  a  centripetal  force  and 
gather  into  potent  units  the  diffuse  atoms  of 
like  will  but  without  co-ordinating  ability. 
So  great  is  this  central  human  instinct  (which 
was  not  only  the  foundation  of  feudalism 
but  harks  back  to  the  very  beginnings  of 
society) ,  that  when  the  great  leader  is  not  re- 
vealed he  is  invented  out  of  the  more  impu- 
dent element  of  any  potential  group,  assur- 
[6] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

ance  taking  the  place  of  competence ;  or  opti- 
mistically assumed,  the  most  available  being 
dragged  from  his  obscurity  and  pitched  into 
a  position,  or  burdened  with  a  task,  outside 
the  limits  of  his  ability  —  as  he  himself  only 
too  often  knows. 

And  as  the  supply  of  leaders  diminishes 
the  more  reckless  becomes  the  desperate 
choice.  It  is  perhaps  not  so  much  that  men 
now  reject  all  leadership  as  it  is  that  they 
blindly  accept  the  inferior  type;  the  spe- 
cious demagogue,  the  unscrupulous  master 
of  effrontery.  Men  follow  to-day  as  they 
always  have  and  always  will,  the  difference 
lies  in  the  quality  of  those  that  are  followed. 
In  default  of  the  leader  of  the  old  type,  the 
man  who  first  saw  beyond  the  obvious  and 
drew  others  after  him  by  force  of  vision  and 
will  and  personal  quality,  the  group,  and  the 
super-group  which  we  call  the  mob,  create 
their  leaders  in  their  own  image,  and  out  of 
their  own  material.  Giolitti  and  Caillaux, 
Ramsay  Macdonald,  Lenine  and  La  Follette 
are  the  synthetic  product  of  a  mechanical 
process  of  self-expression  on  the  part  of 
groups  of  men  without  leaders,  but  who  must 
have  them  and  so  make  shift  to  precipitate 
them  in  material  form  out  of  the  undiffer- 

f7  I 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

entiated  mass  of  their  common  inclinations, 
passions  and  prejudices. 

It  is  because  of  this  that  religion  is  no 
longer  marked  by  the  dominance  of  figures 
like  St.  Paul,  St.  Benedict,  St.  Bernard,  St. 
Francis,  St.  Catherine  of  Siena,  or  even  like 
Luther,  Calvin,  John  Wesley,  but  rather 
by  the  uncouth  flotsam  of  the  intellectual 
underworld  or  the  obscurantist  faquirs  of  a 
decadent  Orientalism.  It  is  because  of  this 
that  no  longer  a  Plato  or  an  Aristotle,  a  St. 
Thomas  Aquinas,  or  a  Duns  Scotus,  a  Kant, 
a  Descartes,  or  a  Herbert  Spencer  controls 
the  destinies  of  philosophy,  but  semi-con- 
verted novelists,  jejune  instructors  in  psy- 
chology, and  imperfectly  developed  but 
sufficiently  voluble  journalists.  It  is  because 
of  this  that  salutary  movements  like  social- 
ism, trades-unionism  and  political  reform 
are  betrayed  by  the  leaders  that,  for  lack  of 
better,  have  been  pitchforked  into  pre-emi- 
nence, and  who,  degraded  and  debased  by 
dulness,  obliquity  of  vision  and  crude  in- 
competence, become  not  a  benefit  but  a 
menace. 

The  argument  that  we  are  too  near  the 
present  (since  we  ourselves  are  the  present) 
to  estimate  greatness  or  establish  our  stand- 
[8] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

ard  of  comparative  values,  but  that  another 
generation  will  find  amongst  our  contempo- 
raries what  we  have  missed,  has  no  validity. 
I  am  speaking  of  leadership,  and  leadership 
is  not  posthumous.  We  knew,  those  of  us 
who  entered  into  the  activities  of  life  about 
1880,  that  we  were  "surrounded  by  such  a 
cloud  of  witnesses,"  that  the  world  was  so 
rich  in  leadership  —  either  for  wisdom  or 
folly  —  we  lacked  no  possible  followings  for 
our  choice,  but  rather  were  confused  by  the 
plethora  of  options.  There  was  no  doubt 
then  that  there  were  great  men  around  and 
about  us.  We  were  all  hero-worshippers 
then,  and  there  was  sufficient  reason  for  our 
worship.  I  have  made  a  list  of  the  men  who 
were  living  in  1880,  all  of  whom  were  great 
captains,  and  who  would  be  accepted  by  all 
as  leaders  of  men:  there  are  sixty  of  them, 
and  I  can  add  another  hundred  of  only  a 
little  less  eminence,  but  whose  claims  some 
might  contest.  All  of  these  hundred  and 
sixty  "immortals"  had  died  before  1905, 
and  I  challenge  anyone  to  fill  a  tenth  of 
the  places  they  left  vacant  with  the  names, 
unknown  in  1880,  of  men  whose  claim  can 
be  unquestioned. 

A  generation  that  contains  such  a  group 

[9] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

as  Emerson,  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Matthew  Ar- 
nold, Herbert  Spencer,  Darwin,  Bismarck, 
Disraeli,  Cavour,  Wagner,  Browning, 
William  Morris,  Tourgeneff,  Stevenson, 
Leo  XIII,  Cardinal  Newman,  Karl  Marx 
and  von  Moltke  is  a  generation  that  lacks 
nothing  in  leadership,  and  when  is  added  a 
further  century  and  a  half  of  names,  all 
practically  of  the  same  grade  and  class,  we 
can  only  look  back  on  those  astonishing 
years  with  admiration,  and  then  around  at 
our  own  time,  with  the  greatest  issues  in  a 
thousand  years  clamouring  for  solution  and 
almost  none  to  lead  in  the  solving,  appalled 
and  despairing,  while  we  reach  out  blindly 
for  some  explanation  of  the  cataclysm  that 
has  occurred. 

There  are  those  who  will  claim  that 
the  leadership  has  not  been  lost  but  only 
changed  in  direction.  They  will  say  that 
the  leaders  are  now  to  be  found  in  the  ranks 
of  applied  science,  of  industrial  exploita- 
tion and  organization,  of  high  finance  and 
economic  "  efficiency."  They  will  offer  as 
their  contribution  Edison  and  Marconi  and 
Krupp;  Sage,  Rockefeller,  Morgan,  Car- 
negie and  the  great  Hebrew  financiers  of  Eu- 
rope. They  will  offer  Ford,  Harmsworth, 
[10] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

Hearst;  the  packers  of  Chicago,  the  mill 
magnates  of  New  England,  the  coal  and  iron 
barons  of  Pennsylvania.  Their  contention 
may  be  admitted;  the  leadership  exists,  and 
it  has  changed  direction;  the  point  is,  how- 
ever, that  this  leadership,  while  it  may  con- 
ceivably supplement  that  of  an  earlier  day 
in  other  fields,  may,  under  no  circumstance 
whatever,  be  assumed  to  serve  as  a  substitute. 
Mr.  Abraham  Flexner  may  well  be  held 
to  contribute  something  (its  essential  value 
is  not  for  the  moment  in  question)  to  the 
idea  of  education  as  it  was  expounded  by 
Cardinal  Newman  or  Arnold  of  Rugby; 
Mr.  Carnegie's  vision  of  culture  is  not  one 
that  came  within  the  purview  of  Emerson 
or  Matthew  Arnold  or  William  Morris, 
while  the  original  and  varied,  if  not  always 
edifying,  religious  cults  of  the  last  genera- 
tion open  up  possibilities  not  indicated  by 
Dr.  Martineau  or  Bishop  Brooks  or  even 
Cardinal  Manning.  Certainly  there  is  some- 
thing in  vers  libre  and  post-impressionism 
and  the  products  of  the  cubist  sculptors  that 
escapes  one  in  Browning  and  Burne-Jones 
and  Saint-Gaudens.  Considered  in  a  supple- 
mentary sense  these  protagonists  of  modern- 
ism may  be  an  extension  of  the  principles  of 

[ii] 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

their  immediate  precursors  (even  of  all  an- 
tecedent creators  and  leaders  during  the  en- 
tire range  of  recorded  history),  but  when  it 
is  assumed  that  they  take  their  place  the 
argument  needs  fortifying  by  something 
other  than  either  the  dictum  itself  or  their 
own  accomplishments. 

In  any  case  the  day  of  great  leaders  has 
passed.  If  we  take  the  Cardinal  of  Malines 
as  a  standard,  as  one  man  at  least  who  meas- 
ures up  to  the  great  controlling  and  direct- 
ing agencies  of  the  last  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  we  shall  find  it  hard  to  pick 
others  to  place  in  his  class.  Certainly  not 
the  successor  of  Leo  XIII  and  Innocent  III, 
of  Gregory  VII  and  Gregory  the  Great; 
nor  any  of  the  present  College  of  Cardinals. 
Honour  and  devotion,  learning  and  piety 
are  not  wanting,  but  where  is  the  vision, 
where  the  qualities  of  command  and  domi- 
nation, where  the  power  and  the  will  that 
mark  the  captains  of  men?  Neither  from 
Rome  nor  Moscow  nor  Canterbury,  neither 
from  the  Episcopal  Church  nor  from  the 
Protestant  denominations,  comes  the  high 
call  for  men  to  rise  up  and  follow  along  the 
lines  revealed  by  clear  vision  and  under  the 
dynamic  force  of  personal  leadership.  Halt- 

[12] 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

ing  and  hesitant,  bewildered  by  opportu- 
nism and  expediency,  dumb  before  a  crisis 
beyond  their  powers  to  meet,  the  shepherds 
and  pastors  of  flocks  already  more  than  dec- 
imated, shake  in  their  indecision,  put  the 
great  issue  to  one  side,  and  while  they  wait 
helplessly  for  a  time  more  in  scale  with  their 
abilities,  turn  to  the  old  round  of  theological 
argument  and  disciplinary  bickerings,  leav- 
ing the  fate  of  their  sheep  to  be  determined 
after  a  fashion  they  cannot  control,  and  the 
humbler  clergy  busy  themselves  with  paro- 
chial routine  or,  to  their  honour,  find  on  the 
blazing  and  thundering  battle  fronts  of  all 
Europe  opportunity  for  heroic  service  in  the 
trenches  and  often  a  glorious  death. 

Nor  in  philosophy  is  the  condition  very 
different.  There  were  not  wanting,  in  the 
immediate  years  before  the  war,  men  of 
"  light  and  leading,"  though  apart  from 
Bergson,  James  and  Chesterton  (though  it 
may  seem  strange  to  name  the  last  in  this 
connection) ,  they  were  hardly  of  the  calibre 
of  their  forebears.  James  is  dead,  Bergson 
almost  completely  silent,  while  Chesterton, 
perhaps  under  the  compulsion  of  his  grave 
illness,  fails  to  meet  the  standard  of  his  ear- 
lier period,  except  perhaps  in  "The  Crimes 

[13] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

of  England  "  and  "  A  Short  History  of  Eng- 
land." Dr.  Jacks  comes  well  to  the  fore  on 
occasion,  and  Dr.  Figgis  and  March  Phil- 
lips, but  Bernard  Shaw  has  silenced  his  phil- 
osophical cynicism  and  Wells  alone  insists 
on  his  own  narrow  vision,  brought  over  from 
the  ante-bellum  epoch,  with  all  its  mechanis- 
tic formulae  and  indeterminate  determinism. 
Of  all  the  ruined  sanctuaries,  that  of  states- 
manship is  the  most  desolate.  It  was  suffi- 
ciently laid  waste  in  the  years  just  before 
the  war,  when  diplomacy,  degenerate  and 
incompetent,  toiled  along  the  dishonoured 
road  that  led  from  the  Congress  of  Berlin. 
Into  the  coil  of  cynicism  and  trickery,  Ed- 
ward VII  and  President  Cleveland  brought 
some  elements  of  honesty  and  good  sense,  but 
the  chancelleries  of  Vienna,  Berlin,  Paris, 
London,  Petersburg  were  united  in  one 
thing,  and  that  their  devotion  to  the  secret, 
the  serpentine  and  the  oblique.  The  "  Bal- 
ance of  Power,"  poisonous  heritage  from 
the  Treaty  of  Berlin,  controlled  all  that  was 
thought  or  done,  and  under  its  malignant 
spell  considerations  of  honour,  justice  and 
righteousness  vanished  from  the  secret  de- 
liberations of  the  various  and  ever-changing 
groups  of  inferior  conspirators.     Since  the 

[14] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

opening  of  the  war  small  men,  pitched  neck- 
and-crop  into  big  places,  have  struggled 
against  this  legacy,  and  with  scant  success. 
Government  in  France  at  the  opening  of 
the  first  of  the  Seven  Seals,  was  a  tangle 
of  political  corruption  complicated  by  ter- 
ror of  what  socialism  would  demand  next; 
the  prolonged  crisis  has  produced — Briand, 
and  no  more,  a  small  man,  strengthened  by 
responsibility  and  opportunity,  who  bore 
himself  with  firmness  and  honesty.  He  has 
now  been  deposed  through  the  machinations 
of  the  still  operative  political  cabals,  to  give 
place  to  the  venerable  but  neither  stimu- 
lating nor  convincing  Ribot,  the  colourless 
Painleve  and  the  superannuated  Clemen- 
ceau.  England  offered  Asquith,  a  somewhat 
sinuous  and  agile  mediocrity  now  smashed 
by  an  extraordinary  journalistic  phenome- 
non who  has  also  been  largely  responsible  for 
Lloyd  George,  another  small  man,  essentially 
the  middle-class  demagogue  of  the  first  dec- 
ade of  the  century,  who  has  also  been  forti- 
fied and  chastened  by  the  compelling  force  of 
anomalous  circumstances.  With  him  appear 
men  like  Churchill,  still  bending  under  the 
weight  of  tragic  fiascos,  Carson,  whom  the 
war  saved  from  becoming  a  rebel  and  an 

[15] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

outlaw,  together  with  a  numerous  clan  of 
financiers  and  industrial  magnates,  some  of 
whom  had  already  exchanged  their  historic 
Hebraic  cognomens  for  others  associated, 
if  not  with  their  own  genealogy,  at  least 
with  the  Norman  conquest.  Italy,  after 
getting  rid  of  her  political  hucksters  and 
demagogues,  has  produced  none  of  even 
moderate  distinction  to  take  their  place.  In 
the  Balkans  Jonescu  and  the  Cretan  Vene- 
zelos  arrived  with  some  heralding  of  trum- 
pets, but  neither  has  succeeded  in  accom- 
plishing anything  in  particular,  and  both  are 
now  relegated  to  the  category  of  geniuses 
"without  the  enacting  clause."  Leaping 
suddenly  into  the  Russian  limelight  come 
Miliukoff,  Count  Lvoff  and  Kerensky;  the 
revolution  is  effected,  the  exaltation  of  the 
"Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court"  is  repeated, 
and  at  once,  from  far  down  amongst  the  sub- 
merged majority,  anarchy  and  insane  folly 
rise  up,  insistent,  not  to  be  denied,  and  al- 
ready their  power  is  in  eclipse,  extinguished 
by  the  rising  tide  of  nihilism  and  dishonour 
—  leaders  who  could  not  lead. 

As  for  the  Teutonic  Empires,  from  Kaiser 
to  Scheidemann  there  is  only  mediocrity 
masquerading  in  the  tarnished  regalia  of 

[16] 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

Bismarck  and  Andrassy.  Precariously  von 
Bethmann,with  phantasmal  Austrian  nobles, 
insecure  Hungarian  magnates  and  Osmanli 
pashas,  struggles  to  meet  increasingly  im- 
possible problems  at  home  and  abroad,  and 
the  time  is  not  far  away  when  the  final  crisis 
a  Bismarck  might  victoriously  have  met,  will 
show  them  thin  and  evanescent,  pale  futili- 
ties who  could  not  lead,  neither  could  they 
control.  And  America?  Well,  when  the 
war  broke  we  had  three  potential  leaders, 
the  President,  Colonel  Roosevelt  and  Mr. 
Bryan,  together  with  the  untried  forces  of 
Cabinet,  Congress  and  the  State  and  munici- 
pal governments.  What  had  been  the  result 
on  these  varied  personalities  of  the  unex- 
ampled stimulus  of  a  world  in  chaos  if  not 
in  dissolution?  Thus  far,  apart  from  the 
President,  the  three  and  a  half  years  of  uni- 
versal liquidation  have  neither  produced  a 
leader  unknown  before  nor  raised  the  stand- 
ard of  individuals  or  of  the  general  mass  of 
politicians.  On  the  whole  the  average  has 
been  lowered.  If  on  the  one  hand  we  have 
the  reliable  honesty  and  ability  of  men  like 
Senators  Lodge,  Borah  and  Williams,  with 
the  mysterious  and  promising  figure  of 
Colonel  House,  we  find  on  the  other  the 

[17] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

ominous  figures  of  Stone,  Cummins,  Gronna, 
Clark,  Vardaman,  La  Follette,  togetherwith 
the  depressing  personalities  that  dominate 
and  give  its  colour  to  the  Cabinet.  Outside 
administration  circles  the  reader  may  pick 
from  the  several  States  such  men  as  he  con- 
siders measure  up  to  the  old  standard  of 
effective  leadership,  or  even  to  that  of  the 
era  just  preceding  the  war.  Of  the  three 
conspicuous  figures  first  named,  one  appears 
to  have  forfeited  the  position  open  to  him 
of  great  constructive  leadership  while  hon- 
ourably refusing  to  follow  up  the  sinister 
opportunities  revealed  in  the  earlier  days  of 
the  war,  and  has  retired  into  an  oblivion 
only  broken  in  the  beginning  by  sheer  force 
of  ingratiating  oratory.  The  second  strove 
for  a  renewal  of  that  popular  confidence  and 
to  restore  that  popular  following  he  so  emi- 
nently deserved,  and  failed,  though  in  this 
failure  was  less  of  discredit  to  him  than  to 
a  public  somewhat  defective  in  its  powers  of 
perception  and  in  its  standard  of  compara- 
tive values.  And  the  third,  the  most  august 
figure  of  all?  Here,  if  anywhere  to-day,  is 
revealed  the  argument  against  the  thesis  I 
adduce  —  perhaps  as  the  exception  that 
proves  the  rule.    The  most  astute  politician 

[18] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

America  has  produced  since  Andrew  Jack- 
son (if  not  since  Jefferson),  with  an  infal- 
lible sense  for  apprehending  the  unexpressed 
will  of  a  working  majority,  he  pursued  for 
three  years  the  standard  method  of  contem- 
porary politics,  gauging  this  will  by  impec- 
cable instinct,  making  it  his  own,  and  so 
becoming  the  acceptable  type  of  leader  who 
does  not  lead  but  obediently  follows  on 
where  the  majority-will  indicates  the  way. 
Then  almost  insensibly  this  method  changed ; 
little  by  little  as  the  inclusive  incapacity  of 
the  democratic  method  revealed  itself  it  was 
relegated  to  the  background  while  a  very  real 
and  equally  constructive  leadership  took  its 
place.  Step  by  step  the  advance  has  been 
progressive  and  explicit;  miraculously  the 
nation  as  a  whole  acknowledges  and  accepts, 
while  the  influence  of  this  novel  and  reassur- 
ing leadership  daily  reaches  further  and 
further  into  the  other  nations  of  the  earth. 
It  is  a  single  leadership:  Cabinet  and  Con- 
gress are  granted  little  part  therein  and  only 
the  mysterious  influences  of  unofficial  and 
personal  advisers  shyly  reveal  themselves 
from  time  to  time.  It  is  a  real  leadership, 
of  the  old  and  almost  forgotten  type,  and  in- 
creasingly is  it  bringing  coherency  out  of 

[19  I 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

the  debilitated  confusion  of  democratic 
methods  and  parliamentary  incapacity  that 
have  hampered  our  allies  and  imperilled 
their  cause  since  the  beginning  of  the  war. 
And  now  opportunity  opens  before  him; 
opportunity  not  only  national  but  world- 
wide. If  he  wills  he  may  become  the 
co-ordinating,  the  directing,  and  the  con- 
structive force  in  the  world,  Arbiter  of  De- 
mocracy, re-creator  of  the  true  democracy  of 
ideal.  The  old  tradition  of  politics,  the  sen- 
sitive appreciation  of  a  vacillating  majority- 
will  and  the  subtle  following  thereof  in  all 
its  tergiversations,  has  been  abandoned  in 
favour  of  a  daring  and  therefore  true  leader- 
ship prefigured  by  some  of  the  finest  verbal 
pronouncements  of  high  principle  the  Re- 
public has  thus  far  heard.  The  old  days 
when  we  were  told  of  a  "  peace  without  vic- 
tory," and  that  we  as  a  nation  had  no  quarrel 
with  the  German  people;  the  days  when  we 
were  assured  that  the  aims  of  Germany  and 
those  of  the  Allies  were  apparently  much 
the  same;  the  days  of  experimental  adven- 
tures in  compromise  are  now  very  far  away. 
Does  this  mean  that  from  now  on  the  course 
followed  will  be  increasingly  exalted,  high- 
spirited  and  courageous?    It  may  well  be; 

[20] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF    MEDIOCRITY 

if  so,  and  to  that  extent,  the  present  lack  of 
world-leadership  will  be  corrected. 

Tested  by  every  standard  this  leadership 
is  now  deficient  both  in  quantity  and  quality. 
To  what  are  we  to  attribute  this  anomalous 
condition?  Why  is  it  that  our  lack  is  not 
only  appalling  when  compared  with  those 
periodical  moments  of  the  past  when,  as  in 
the  eleventh  century,  every  nation  of  Europe 
was  following  leaders  as  amazing  in  number 
as  they  were  commanding  in  ability,  but 
even  in  contrast  with  the  last  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  This  was  not  an  epoch 
to  which  future  generations  will  look  back 
with  any  notable  degree  of  pride,  yet  it  left 
us  a  heritage  of  great  names  that,  as  I  hare 
said  before,  reached  the  number  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty,  a  count  that  could  be  in- 
creased to  two  hundred  if  the  arbitrary 
quarter  century  I  have  chosen,  during  which 
all  were  still  living,  were  extended  by  ten 
years  before  1880  and  by  five  after  1905. 

The  answer  is  simple,  but  it  is  an  answer 
that  will  be  rejected  with  practical  unanim- 
ity. Democracy  has  achieved  its  perfect 
work  and  has  now  reduced  all  mankind  to  a 
dead  level  of  incapacity  where  great  leaders 
are  no  longer  either  wanted  or  brought  into 

[21] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

existence,  while  society  itself  is  unable,  of 
its  own  power  as  a  whole,  to  lift  itself  from 
the  nadir  of  its  own  uniformity. 

"The  world  must  be  made  safe  for  de- 
mocracy" is  a  noble  phrase,  but  it  is  mean- 
ingless without  its  corollary,  "  democracy 
must  be  made  safe  for  the  world."  This 
latter  condition  does  not  exist.  For  exactly 
one  hundred  years  democracy  has  suffered 
a  progressive  degeneration  until  it  is  now 
not  a  blessing  but  a  menace. 

This  categorical  statement  demands  both 
amplification  and  explanation.  In  the  first 
place  the  word  "democracy"  is  used  in  its 
current  sense,  as  representing  both  the  im- 
plicit aim  and  the  explicit  result  of  individ- 
ual and  community  life  during  the  last  two 
generations  in  Great  Britain,  France  and  the 
United  States;  and  in  all  other  countries 
where  any  portion  of  the  democratic  system 
has  been  put  in  practice,  including  the  very 
recent  "republics"  of  Portugal,  China  and 
Russia.  It  covers  not  only  political  agencies 
and  methods  but  all  those  other  forms  of  ac- 
tivity, such  as  organized  religion,  education 
and  social  life,  where  democratic  principles 
and  devices  have  been  increasingly  adopted. 

It  does  not  mean  the  real  democracy, 
[22] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

which  is  the  noblest  ideal  ever  discovered 
by  man  or  revealed  to  him.  True  democ- 
racy means  three  things :  Abolition  of  Privi- 
lege ;  Equal  Opportunity  for  All ;  and  Utili- 
zation of  Ability.  Unless  democracy 
achieves  these  things  it  is  not  democracy, 
and  no  matter  how  "  progressive  "  its  meth- 
ods, how  apparently  democratic  its  machin- 
ery, it  may  perfectly  well  be  an  oligarchy, 
a  kakistocracy  or  a  tyranny.  The  three  im- 
perative desiderata  named  above  may  be 
achieved  under  a  monarchy,  they  may  be 
lost  in  a  republic,  the  mechanism  does  not 
matter.  One  of  the  chief  faults  with  what 
we  call  our  democracy  is  our  stolid  failure 
to  understand  that  there  is  a  democratic  ideal 
and  a  democratic  method,  that  there  is  not 
necessarily  any  connection  between  the  two, 
and  that  generally  speaking  the  democratic 
method  (unstable,  constantly  changing  its 
form)  is  incapable  of  accomplishing  the 
democratic  ideal. 

That  "democracy"  for  which  the  war  is 
to  make  the  world  safe  is  of  course  the  de- 
mocracy of  ideal;  it  could  not  conceivably 
be  the  democracy  of  method  for  this  had 
proved  itself  in  the  two  generations  before 
the  war  corrupt,  incompetent  and  ridicu- 

[23] 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

lous,  while  during  the  war  it  has  revealed 
increasingly  its  almost  sublime  incapacity  in 
all  matters  where  it  has  had  a  part;  from 
Westminster  to  Rome,  from  Washington  to 
Petrograd.  The  only  thing  that  has  thus  far 
saved  the  Allies  from  the  utmost  penalty  of 
their  common  democracy  of  method  has 
been  the  process  which  has  proceeded  every- 
where of  eliminating  the  democracy  and 
substituting  a  pure  and  perfectly  irrespon- 
sible absolutism,  whether  of  one  man  or  a 
very  small  committee. 

Now  for  the  last  hundred  years  the  world 
has  abandoned  itself  to  an  insane  devising 
of  new  mechanical  toys  for  the  achieving 
of  democracy:  representative  government, 
the  parliamentary  system,  universal  suf- 
frage, the  party  system,  the  secret  ballot,  ro- 
tation in  office,  the  initiative,  referendum 
and  recall,  popular  election  of  members  of 
upper  legislative  houses,  woman  suffrage, 
direct  legislation.  All  have  failed  to  obtain 
abolition  of  privilege,  equal  opportunity 
and  utilization  of  ability,  on  the  contrary, 
they  have  worked  in  the  opposite  direction, 
and  so  far  as  these  three  things  are  con- 
cerned, the  peoples  are  worse  off  than  they 
were  fifty  years  ago,  While  during  the  same 

[24] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

period  government  and  society  have  become 
progressively  more  venal,  less  competent 
and  further  separated  from  the  ideals  of 
honour,  duty  and  righteousness.  Mean- 
while so  obsessed  have  we  become  by  our 
pursuit  of  new  devices  for  obtaining  democ- 
racy, and  by  our  search  for  nostrums  to  cure 
the  ills  of  our  constant  failures,  we  have 
now  wholly  forgotten  in  what  democracy 
consists. 

In  the  year  before  the  war  the  govern- 
ment of  the  great  democracies  —  Great 
Britain,  France  and  the  United  States  — 
was  illogical,  inefficient,  and  widely  severed 
from  the  one  object  of  obtaining  for  all  men 
justice  and  the  rule  of  law.  It  was  pro- 
foundly cursed  by  the  incubus  of  little  men 
in  great  office,  by  chaotic,  selfish  and  unin- 
telligent legislation,  dull,  stupid  and  fre- 
quently venal  administration,  and  by  par- 
tial, unscrupulous  and  pettifogging  judicial 
procedure.  Everywhere  the  bulk  of  legis- 
lation increased  to  preposterous  propor- 
tions as  its  quality  degenerated.  Superfi- 
cial, doctrinaire,  and  engendered  by  selfish 
personal  interests,  it  ceased  to  command  re- 
spect or  even  obedience  in  proportion  as  it 
became  vacillating  and  insecure.     Legisla- 

[25] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

tive  decrees,  subject  to  sudden  abrogation 
or  reversal,  took  the  place  of  laws.  With 
the  party  system  dominant  (now  severed  en- 
tirely from  fundamental  principle  and  be- 
come simply  the  engine  of  spoils),  demo- 
cratic administrative  machinery  became  the 
obedient  agency  of  a  partizan  and  irrespon- 
sible committee,  maintaining  itself  through 
purchased  "honours,"  and  exemption 
from  well-deserved  penalties,  in  England; 
through  alliances  with  secret  and  equally 
irresponsible  cabals  whose  object  was  plun- 
der of  one  sort  or  another,  in  France; 
and  through  deals,  spoils  and  "  pork,"  in 
the  United  States.  Everywhere  the  standard 
of  personal  ability  sank  lower  and  lower, 
until  all  manner  of  ignorant,  incapable  and 
frequently  venal  men,  without  culture,  tra- 
dition or  principle,  forced  up  from  the  sub- 
merged strata  of  society,  entered  into  the  leg- 
islative and  executive  and  administrative 
departments  of  government  and  took  pos- 
session. The  kind  of  men  rife  in  the 
Chambre  des  Deputes  and  in  the  short-lived 
ministries  were  of  the  same  type  found  in 
the  provincial  mairies,  ignorant,  doctrinaire, 
self-sufficient,  with  the  insolence  of  power 
clouding  even  what  flickerings  of  native  in- 
[26] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

telligence  or  honour  they  may  have  pos- 
sessed. The  full  story  of  what  happened  in 
England  between  the  death  of  Gladstone 
and  the  triumph  of  Lloyd  George  has  not 
yet  been  written,  but  the  facts  are  known  if 
unavowed.  Autocracy  in  its  worst  form,  in 
Byzantium,  the  Renaissance  or  the  eight- 
eenth century,  contains  no  more  sordid  ex- 
amples of  base  trafficking  in  honours,  emol- 
uments and  privileges,  while  never  was  the 
personal  quality  of  the  beneficiaries  so  radi- 
cally unworthy  and  so  malevolent  in  its  in- 
fluence on  the  State. 

During  the  Middle  Ages,  when  the  ideal 
of  democracy  was  at  its  highest  point,  and 
when  it  was  most  nearly  achieved,  it  was 
held  as  incontrovertible  that  the  purpose  of 
political  organization  was  primarily  ethical 
and  moral,  and  that  its  function  was  the 
achievement  of  righteousness  and  justice. 
Authority  was  from  God,  and  the  power 
also  to  enforce  that  authority,  but  both  were 
operative  only  when  they  were  used  for 
right  ends.  "La  dame  ne  le  sire  n  en  est 
seigneur  se  non  dou  dreit."  Equally  un- 
questioned was  the  fact  that  law  was  not 
made,  but  was  the  concrete  expression  of  that 
morality,  right  and  justice  that  had  grown 

[27] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

with  the  life  of  the  community,  exactly  ex- 
pressing the  needs  of  society,  and  with  the 
moral  sanction  of  communal  life  behind  it. 
"  There  is  no  King  where  will  rules  and  not 
law"  was  the  Mediaeval  conviction  as  op- 
posed to  the  absolutism  of  the  Renais- 
sance first  expressed  in  theoretical  form  by 
Macchiavelli.  Finally  the  Middle  Ages 
asserted  that  Government  was  a  solemn  con- 
tract between  ruled  and  rulers,  to  be  broken 
by  neither  without  the  abrogation  of  the 
contract.  Treason  on  the  part  of  the  sov- 
ereign was  then  as  clearly  recognized  a  pos- 
sibility as  treason  on  the  part  of  the  people. 
This  great  ideal,  the  noblest  man  has  yet 
conceived  in  the  realm  of  civil  law,  was  com- 
pletely destroyed  by  the  Renaissance,  and 
absolutism  took  its  place.  This,  having 
made  itself  intolerable,  was  in  its  turn  de- 
stroyed in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth 
and  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, when  once  more  the  old  ideals  of  Me- 
diaeval freedom  came  to  the  front  though 
in  a  somewhat  different  verbal  guise.  The 
Oath  of  the  Tennis  Court,  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  the  Reform  Laws  of  Eng- 
land were  all  assertions  of  the  true  prin- 
ciples of  the  real  democracy,  but  they  were 
[28] 


THE   NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

destined  either  to  fail  of  fulfillment  or  to 
only  a  brief  duration  of  power,  partly  be- 
cause of  the  shattering  of  the  sense  of  right 
and  wrong  by  Calvinism  and  other  Protes- 
tant phenomena,  partly  because  their  birth 
coincided  with  an  industrial  development 
that  blotted  out  for  the  time  all  considera- 
tions except  those  of  material  benefit  and  of 
selfish  advancement.  Here  and  there,  for 
brief  periods  of  time,  righteous  impulses 
made  operative  a  true  democracy,  but  by  the 
middle  of  the  century  the  battle  had  been 
lost:  materialism,  omnipotent  in  its  power, 
invincible  through  its  self-created  energies, 
was  everywhere  supreme,  and  from  then  on 
was  recorded  only  the  progressive  develop- 
ment of  a  conscienceless  material  imperial- 
ism, the  incessant  invention  of  new  and  al- 
ways unsuccessful  machines  for  the  obtain- 
ing of  the  old  democratic  ideals,  the  growth, 
through  rage  and  impotence  at  the  solemn 
mockery,  of  violent  and  revolutionary  prop- 
aganda along  nihilistic,  anarchistic  or  so- 
cialistic lines,  and  finally  the  apotheosis  of 
inefficiency,  injustice  and  unrighteousness 
that  held  the  democracies  of  the  world  when 
the  Teutonic  Powers  made  their  desperate 
but  perfectly  logical  attempt  to  establish  the 

[29I 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

hegemony  of  Europe  under  the  dominion  of 
efficiency,  materialism  and  force. 

That  very  wise  Frenchman,  Emile 
Faguet,  has  said,  "The  sum  and  substance 
of  the  Revolution  was  to  substitute  for 
'Votre  Majeste'  'Votre  Majorite.'"  The 
absolutism  and  the  tyranny  remained,  only 
its  habitat  and  its  personality  were  changed. 
Something  however  was  lost,  and  that  the 
possibility  that  legislation  and  the  execution 
of  the  laws  might  sometimes  approach  in- 
telligence and  efficiency.  In  another  place 
the  same  author  says:  "Our  examination  of 
modern  democracy  has  brought  us  to  the 
following  conclusions.  The  representation 
of  the  country  is  reserved  for  the  incom- 
petent and  also  for  those  biassed  by  passion, 
who  are  doubly  incompetent.  The  rep- 
resentatives of  the  people  want  to  do 
everything  themselves.  They  do  every- 
thing badly  and  infect  the  government  and 
the  administration  with  their  passion  and 
incompetence." 

Democratic  government  for  the  last 
twenty-five  years  has  neither  desired  nor 
created  leaders  of  an  intellectual  or  moral 
capacity  above  that  of  the  general  mass  of 
voters,  and  when  by  chance  these  appear 

[30] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

they  are  abandoned  for  a  type  that  is  not  of 
the  numerical  average  but  below  it,  and  the 
standard  has  been  lowering  itself  steadily 
for  a  generation.  The  strong  man,  strong 
of  mind,  of  will,  of  moral  sense,  the  man 
born  to  create  and  to  lead,  now  seeks  other 
fields  for  his  activity,  or  rather  one  field 
alone,  and  that  the  domain  of  "big  busi- 
ness" and  finance.  Here  at  least  he  finds 
scope  for  his  force  and  will  and  leadership, 
even  if  the  opportunities  to  use  his  moral 
sense  to  advantage  leave  something  to  be 
desired.  The  world  no  longer  wants  or 
knows  how  to  use  statesmen,  philosophers, 
artists,  religious  prophets  and  shepherds, 
but  rather  "  captains  of  industry,"  directors 
of  "high  finance,"  "efficiency  experts," 
shrewd  manipulators  of  popular  opinion 
through  journalism,  or  of  popular  votes 
through  primaries,  political  conventions, 
and  the  legislative  chambers  of  representa- 
tive government.  Here  also  the  demand 
creates  the  supply. 

Tributary  to  this  demand  is  the  current 
system  of  popular  education,  probably  the 
worst  ever  devised  so  far  as  character-mak- 
ing is  concerned.  Secularized,  eclectic,  vo- 
cational and  intensive  educational  systems 

[31] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

do  not  educate  in  any  true  sense  of  the  word, 
while  they  do  not  develop  character  but 
even  work  in  the  opposite  direction.  The 
concrete  results  of  popular  education,  as  this 
has  been  conducted  during  the  last  genera- 
tion, have  been  less  and  less  satisfactory  both 
from  the  point  of  view  of  culture  and  that 
of  character,  and  the  product  of  schools  and 
colleges  tends  steadily  towards  a  lower  and 
lower  level  of  attainment.  Why  anything 
else  should  be  expected  is  hard  to  see.  The 
new  education,  with  religion  and  morals 
ignored  except  under  the  aspect  of  archae- 
ology; with  Latin  and  Greek  superseded, 
and  all  other  cultural  studies  as  well;  with 
logic,  philosophy  and  dialectic  abandoned 
for  psychology,  biology  and  "  business  ad- 
ministration"; the  new  education  with  its 
free  electives  and  vocational  training,  and 
its  apotheosis  of  theoretical  and  applied  sci- 
ence (a  glory  and  a  dominion  mitigated 
only  by  the  insidious  penetration  of  semi- 
professional  athletics) — this  new  educa- 
tion was  conceived  and  put  in  practice  for 
the  chief  purpose  of  fitting  men  for  the  sort 
of  life  that  was  universal  during  the  elapsed 
years  of  the  present  century,  and  this  life 
had  no  place  for  pre-eminence,  no  use  for 

[32] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

leadership,  except  in  the  categories  of  busi- 
ness, applied  science  and  finance.  It  did  its 
work  to  admiration,  and  the  result  is  before 
us  in  the  shape  of  a  society  that  has  been 
wholly  democratized,  not  by  filling  in  the 
valleys  and  lifting  the  malarial  swamps  of 
the  submerged  masses,  but  by  a  levelling  of 
all  down  to  their  own  plane. 

The  disappearance  of  religion  as  a  vital 
force  in  human  life  and  society,  during  the 
last  century,  has  been  a  very  potent  agency 
in  urging  political,  educational  and  in- 
dustrial democracy  towards  its  final  tri- 
umph, and  in  fixing  the  manacles  of  capital- 
ism and  industrial  slavery  on  the  world. 
Since  the  Reformation  religion  has  been 
only  a  dissolving  tradition,  without  any  real 
force  or  potency  in  and  over  society.  For 
individuals  it  has,  from  time  to  time,  pos- 
sessed all  its  old  energy:  over  them  it  has 
exerted  all  its  old  influence,  and  just  as  great 
saints,  confessors  and  even  martyrs  have  shed 
their  glory  over  the  last  century  as  at  any 
time  in  the  past.  But  since  the  Reformation 
religion  has  gone  back  to  the  catacombs 
whence  Constantine  had  drawn  it  fifteen 
centuries  ago:  it  is  now  the  precious  pos- 
session of  the  individual,  hidden,  cloistered, 

[33] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

fearful  of  coming  to  the  light.  As  a  domi- 
nating influence  over  states,  as  a  controlling 
power  in  diplomacy,  business,  politics,  phi- 
losophy, education,  art,  or  over  communi- 
ties as  such,  it  is  now,  and  has  been  for  a 
long  time,  a  negligible  factor. 

This  is  true  as  well  of  Catholicism  as  of 
Protestantism.  For  generations  at  a  time 
it  has  been  the  effective  moral  and  spiritual 
guardian  of  nations,  and  while  this  was  true 
civilization  flourished  as  neither  before  nor 
since.  The  Renaissance  destroyed  the  claim 
of  the  Church,  as  it  was  then,  to  such  moral 
and  spiritual  leadership,  and  the  Reforma- 
tion and  Revolution  destroyed  the  fact.  For 
a  time,  as  a  result  of  the  Counter-Reforma- 
tion, something  of  the  old  leadership  was 
restored  in  all  its  plenitude,  where  Protes- 
tantism had  not  taken  effect,  but  little  by 
little  it  surrendered  to  the  new  spirit  in  the 
world,  until  now  it  is  not  only  impotent 
amongst  the  nations,  it  is  as  well  conditioned 
by  the  same  considerations  of  materialism 
and  opportunism  and  a  false  democracy,  as 
Protestantism,  industrialism  and  the  capi- 
talistic-scientific state.  The  Church  still 
carries  in  petto  all  that  was  ever  her  pos- 
session,   including   infinite   possibilities   of 

[34] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

beneficent  action  and  influence;  at  present, 
however,  this  is  inoperative,  and  with  the 
rest  of  the  world  she  stands  hesitant  and 
diffident,  rejected  by  the  majority  of  men, 
ignored  by  states  and  denied  even  the  form 
of  leadership. 

Democracy  in  government  and  democ- 
racy in  education  have  each  played  their 
part  in  the  destruction  of  leadership  and 
the  establishing  of  the  reign  of  mediocrity. 
There  is  yet  a  third  aspect,  or  rather  result, 
of  the  same  force,  which  may  perhaps  prove 
in  the  end  the  most  significant  of  all,  and 
that  is  the  democratization  of  society  by  the 
breaking  down  of  the  just  and  normal  bar- 
riers of  race,  first  through  the  so-called 
"melting  pot"  process,  second  through  the 
substitution  of  the  mongrel  for  the  product 
of  pure  blood  by  reason  of  the  free  and  reck- 
less mixing  of  incompatible  strains.  From 
the  beginning  of  modern  democracy  it  has 
been  with  its  adherents  a  cardinal  point  of 
faith  that  a  "free  country"  should  set  no 
limits  to  immigration  of  any  race,  class  or 
degree  of  cultural  development.  It  is 
equally  a  dogma  that  under  a  true  democ- 
racy there  is  no  discrimination  possible  be- 
tween individuals  on  the  score  of  difference 

[  35  1 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

in  race,  blood  or  status,  and  that  therefore 
no  restrictions  should  be  recognized  or  es- 
tablished which  would  control  or  limit 
absolute  freedom  of  union  in  marital  rela- 
tions and  the  legal  procreation  of  children. 
The  nineteenth  century  superstition, 
erected  by  the  doctrinaire  protagonists  of 
"  evolution,"  that  human  progress  was  both 
automatic  and  constant,  through  the  acqui- 
sition of  new  qualities  by  education,  the 
force  of  environment,  and  "  natural  selec- 
tion," has  been  the  scientific  justification 
for  the  supposedly  "democratic"  principle 
of  free  immigration  and  free  mating.  Were 
the  theory  demonstrably  true  it  would  indeed 
negative  the  chief  arguments  for  the  scrupu- 
lous recognition  and  preservation  of  race 
values  both  in  marriage  and  control  of  im- 
migration. If  character  is  determined  by 
education  and  environment,  and  is  trans- 
mitted in  substance  generation  after  genera- 
tion, the  question  is  manifestly  only  one  of 
enough  education,  of  the  right  kind,  and  dis- 
tributed with  sufficient  generality.  Mongol 
and  Slovak,  Malay  and  Hottentot  stand  on 
the  same  plane  with  Latin  and  Saxon  and 
Celt,  for  it  is  merely  a  question  of  educa- 
tion, environment  and  continued  breeding; 

[36] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

good  is  cumulative,  automatically  trans- 
mitted, and  time  is  the  answer  to  all. 

On  this  superstition  has  been  erected  the 
great  modern  system  of  universal  state 
education.  With  a  mechanical  exactness  it 
has  failed  to  produce  appreciable  results. 
State  education,  secularized,  standardized, 
compulsory,  has  left  native  character  un- 
touched, furnishing  only  a  body  of  faculties, 
used  to  good  ends  if  such  was  the  character- 
predisposition  of  the  individual,  for  base 
ends  if  this  race  or  family  predisposition  so 
determined.  Nor  is  there  any  evidence 
whatever  that  what  the  father  acquires  the 
son  inherits.  It  is  a  commonplace  of  sociol- 
ogy that  the  American-born  son  of  the  for- 
eign-born immigrant  of  a  decadent  race  or 
inferior  blood  who  himself  had  reacted  to 
the  stimulus  of  a  new  environment  and  un- 
precedented educational  opportunities,  is 
not  in  general  an  advance  over  his  progeni- 
tor either  in  character  or  capacity,  but  rather, 
however  great  his  educational  acquirement, 
a  retrogression  and  a  return  to  type. 

Empirical  "science"  of  the  nineteenth 
century  yields  to  the  more  exact  science  of 
the  twentieth  century,  and  it  is  now  ad- 
mitted that  acquired  characteristics  are  not 

[37] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF    MEDIOCRITY 

heritable.  That  which  persists  is  some  in- 
delible quality  of  blood  or  of  race,  modified 
by  the  conjunction  of  two  germ  plasms  in 
generation;  while  new  species  are  not  the 
result  of  the  building  up  of  one  characteris- 
tic added  to  another  by  inheritance  and  the 
process  of  "  natural  selection  "  and  the  "  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest,"  but  of  some  cataclysmic 
action  the  nature  and  source  of  which  no 
scientist  has  determined  or  dared  to  assume. 

With  the  breakdown  of  this  once  popular 
theory,  the  factor  of  blood  becomes  no  longer 
negligible  and  the  doctrine  of  the  omnipo- 
tence of  education  and  environment  falls 
to  the  ground,  yet  we  still  continue  debauch- 
ing race  by  free  movement  of  peoples 
through  immigration,  and  by  unrestrained 
mating  amongst  men  and  women  of  alien 
racial  qualities.  In  large  sections  of  Amer- 
ica society  is  now  completely  mongrel,  and 
the  same  is  true  of  portions  of  Europe 
where  the  process  is  of  increasing  force. 
Through  uncontrolled  alliances  the  same 
thing  is  happening  in  blood,  and  appar- 
ently the  whole  world  is  about  to  repeat 
what  already  has  happened  in  Russia,  the 
Balkans  and  Central  America. 

The  appeal  of  the  eugenist  to  biology  and 

[38] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

the  testimony  of  botany  and  zoology  is  dan- 
gerous when  carried  too  far — as  it  gener- 
ally is  —  for  it  leaves  out  of  account  the  ele- 
ment of  the  soul,  which  is  a  factor  that 
enters  into  the  human  consideration  and  is 
not  operative  in  the  case  of  plants  and  beasts. 
For  those  who  deny  its  existence  except  as 
a  biological  product  of  the  working  of 
purely  physical  forces,  the  democratic  prin- 
ciple of  the  free  movement,  intercourse  and 
mating  of  peoples  of  every  known  blood, 
race  and  status  can  only  appear  the  blackest 
and  most  imbecile  crime  in  the  human  cal- 
endar. Continued  for  another  generation 
or  two  the  result  can  only  be  universal  mon- 
grelism  and  the  consequent  end  of  culture 
and  civilization.  Cross-fertilization  and 
the  producing  of  special  and  higher  types 
thereby  is  a  perfectly  artificial  process,  and 
however  brilliant  the  result  in  the  first  in- 
stance the  tendency  of  reversion  to  type  is 
inexorable.  Either  the  result  is  a  hybrid 
without  power  of  propagation,  or  a  precari- 
ous phenomenon  tending  inevitably  towards 
a  retrogression  that  in  a  few  generations 
comes  back  to  the  normal  type. 

Nor  is  the  situation  much  better  when  re- 
garded from  the  standpoint  of  those  who 

[39] 


THE   NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

postulate  of  each  individual  a  spiritual  fac- 
tor that  is  not  the  product  of  biological  proc- 
esses but  is  something  of  a  different  nature 
added  thereto.  This  element  in  the  human 
entity  works  towards  the  negativing  or 
amelioration  of  the  conditions  consequent 
on  the  predispositions  determined  by  hered- 
ity—  race  factors,  blood  tendencies,  new 
inclinations  that  are  the  result  of  the  com- 
bining of  two  different  sets  of  parental  char- 
acteristics—  and  towards  the  utilization  of 
the  possibilities  inherent  in  education  and 
environment.  It  is,  however,  not  omnipo- 
tent; it  is  conditioned  by  the  nature  of  the 
various  forces  with  which  it  deals,  and  it 
can  rise  superior  to  them  only  when  it  calls 
into  play  the  energy  of  those  kindred  spirit- 
ual forces  that  exist,  are  universally  avail- 
able, and  are  the  only  sure  instrument  of 
victory  over  the  gravitational  pull  of  a  pre- 
determined natural  handicap.  Recognition 
of,  and  reliance  on,  these  remedial  factors 
decrease  in  inverse  ratio  to  their  necessity, 
and  this  is  true  both  of  the  individual  and 
the  community  as  a  whole.  The  time  comes 
for  both  when  the  power  of  the  degenerative 
forces  becomes  so  great  through  poverty  of 
blood,  hybridization  of  race  and  depravity 

[40] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

of  status,  that  the  energy  of  the  spiritual  fac- 
tor is  negatived,  and  the  individual  or  the 
community  or  the  race  declines,  completes 
the  final  surrender,  and  fails,  disappearing 
in  ignominy  and  oblivion.  There  is  no 
tragedy  greater  than  that  of  the  human  soul 
full  of  the  promise  and  potency  and  desire 
of  good  things,  imprisoned  in  the  forbid- 
ding circle  of  mongrel  blood,  inimical 
inheritance  and  pernicious  environment 
against  which  it  desperately  rebels,  but  from 
which  there  is  no  possibility  of  escape  ex- 
cept through  the  power  of  supernatural 
assistance  on  which  it  no  longer  possesses 
the  impulse  or  the  will  to  call. 

Democracy  of  method  then,  not  democ- 
racy of  ideal,  has  not  only  failed  to  attain 
the  supreme  objects  for  which,  in  its  protean 
forms,  it  has  been  devised,  it  has  as  well 
brought  into  existence  a  system  that  has 
practically  eliminated  sane,  potent  and  con- 
structive leadership  and  has  therefore  be- 
trayed society,  involving  it  in  a  profound 
mediocrity  which  now  confronts  that  fate 
which  always  follows  identical  progress  in 
other  categories  of  the  organic  world, — 
reversion  to  type  and  ultimate  sterility. 

And  so  we  stand  to-day  where  the  Great 

[41] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

War  has  revealed  us,  peoples  without  lead- 
ers; helpless,  inefficient  and,  barring  the 
miracle  of  redemption  through  bitter  chas- 
tizement,  hurrying  on  to  anarchy  or  slavery 
as  the  fortunes  of  war  may  determine.  The 
true  democracy  of  St.  Louis,  Edward  I 
and  Washington  is  forgotten  and  a  false 
democracy  has  taken  its  place,  employ- 
ing the  old  shibboleths  but  ignoring  the 
thing  itself,  while  inventing  one  new  device 
after  another  to  serve  as  a  red  herring  drawn 
across  the  trail  pursued  implacably  by  the 
ever-increasing  numbers  of  those  who  see 
the  inefficiency  and  deceitfulness  of  it  all, 
and  maintain  their  pursuit  so  that  in  the  end 
they  may  establish  what  is  to  them  democ- 
racy pure  and  simple,  but  is  in  fact  its 
reductio  ad  absurdum. 

Whatever  the  issue  of  the  war  there  is  for 
the  world  neither  release  from  intolerable 
menace  nor  yet  a  proximate  salvation.  The 
war  that  is  redeeming  myriads  of  souls 
leaves  the  organic  system  of  society,  both  ma- 
terial and  spiritual,  untouched.  Were  peace 
to  come  to-morrow,  after  a  brief  period  of 
readjustment  life  would  go  on  much  as 
before,  with  industrialism  supreme  and 
capitalism  versus  proletarianism  the  condi- 

[42] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

tioning  clauses  of  its  unstable  equilibrium; 
with  the  parliamentary  system  still  in  vogue, 
and  all  this  means  of  incapacity,  opportu- 
nism and  the  political  survival  of  the  unfit; 
with  religion  in  a  condition  of  heresy  against 
heresy  and  all  against  a  thin  simulacrum  of 
Catholicity;  with  philosophy  still  clinging 
to  the  shreds  and  tatters  of  evolution  or  re- 
modelling itself  on  the  plausible  lines  of  an 
intellectualized  materialism;  with  the  mon- 
grelizing  of  blood  and  community  going 
steadily  forward,  and  with  education  prowl- 
ing through  the  ruins  of  scientific  determin- 
ism, and  struggling  ever  to  build  out  of  its 
shreds  and  shards  some  new  machine  that 
will  make  even  more  certain  the  direct  ap- 
plication of  scholastic  results  to  the  one  prob- 
lem of  wealth  production  —  with  educa- 
tion failing  as  before  to  produce  leaders  to 
fill  a  demand  that  no  longer  exists. 

The  best  that  one  can  say,  if  peace  really 
comes  again  and  man  returns  once  more  to 
his  old  ways  of  life,  is  that  this  return  will 
be  for  the  briefest  of  periods.  The  war  is 
only  the  first  of  a  series,  for  one  war  alone 
cannot  undo  the  cumulative  errors  of  five 
centuries.  Either  after  a  year  or  two  for 
the  taking  of  breath,  or  merging  into  it  with- 

[4.?  ] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

out  appreciable  break,  will  come  the  second 
world-wide  convulsion,  the  war  for  the  revo- 
lutionizing of  society,  which  will  run  its  long 
and  terrible  course  in  the  determined  effort 
to  substitute  for  our  present  industrial  sys- 
tem of  life  (in  itself  perhaps  the  worst  man 
has  devised)  something  more  consonant 
with  the  principles  of  justice.  And  the 
third,  which  may  also  follow  immediately 
after  the  second,  or  merge  into  it,  or  even 
precede  it,  will  be  the  war  between  the  false 
democracy,  now  everywhere  in  evidence, 
and  whatever  is  left  of  the  true  democracy 
of  man's  ideal.  From  these  three  visita- 
tions there  is  no  escape.  The  thing  we  have 
so  earnestly  and  arduously  built  up  out  of 
Renaissance,  Reformation  and  Revolution, 
with  industrialism  and  scientific  determin- 
ism as  the  structural  material,  is  not  a  civili- 
zation at  all,  and  it  must  be  destroyed  in 
order  that  the  ground  may  be  cleared  for 
something  better.  At  first  it  seemed  that 
one  war  might  do  the  work,  when  we  con- 
sidered the  glorious  regeneration  of  France 
and  the  heroism  and  self-sacrifice  of  all  our 
allies.  We  know  better  now.  We  can  see 
that  the  war  has  not  touched  the  industrial 
problem  at  all,  nor  the  religious  nor  the 

[44] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

social  nor  the  political.  Capitalist  on  the  one 
hand,  proletarian  on  the  other,  when  they 
stop  to  think  of  themselves  in  either  capac- 
ity, are  just  of  the  same  old  kidney  as  before, 
and  the  problem  of  final  solution  only  hangs 
in  abeyance.  The  same  is  true  of  govern- 
ment in  France,  England,  America.  Patri- 
otism and  devotion,  genuine  as  they  are  in 
many  cases,  serve  only  as  a  costume  easily 
laid  aside,  and  underneath  is  just  the  same 
old  politician,  learning  nothing,  forgetting 
nothing.  Nothing  is  added  to  the  issue  by 
rotund  phrases  about  the  warfare  for  uni- 
versal democracy.  When  nations  are 
blindly  and  half  unconsciously  fighting  for 
the  last  shreds  of  honour  and  liberty  left 
over  from  an  old  Christian  civilization, 
their  case  is  not  fortified  by  suggestions  that 
they  really  are  struggling  to  preserve  and 
extend  representative  government,  univer- 
sal suffrage  or  direct  legislation;  rather 
something  is  taken  away  from  a  holy  cause. 
Great  leaders  could  not  have  averted  the 
war,  and  when  Lloyd  George  declares  that 
if  Germany  had  been  a  democracy  the  war 
could  not  have  occurred,  he  is  simply  in- 
dulging in  the  standard  type  of  political 
jargon.     The  issue  was  too  great  to  be  set 

[45] 


THE   NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

aside  by  a  change  from  imperialistic  effi- 
ciency to  democratic  incapacity. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  true  that  men  com- 
petent to  see  clearly,  capable  of  thinking 
constructively,  and  with  will  to  lead  ca- 
pably, might,  at  this  juncture,  make  this 
the  last  war  and  avert  the  grim  terror  of  the 
two  others  to  come.  "  Mene,  Tekel,  Uph- 
arsin"  is  on  the  wall  in  words  of  fire  and 
blood,  and  the  Belshazzars  of  modernism 
can  neither  understand  them,  nor,  which  is 
worse,  find  their  interpreter,  therefore  they 
and  we  go  on  to  our  predestined  fate. 

Democracy,  without  the  supreme  leader- 
ship of  men  who  by  nature  or  divine  direc- 
tion can  speak  and  act  with  and  by  author- 
ity, is  a  greater  menace  than  autocracy. 
Men  and  nations  have  been  what  they  have 
been,  either  for  good  or  evil,  not  by  the  will 
of  a  numerical  majority  but  by  the  supreme 
leadership  of  the  few  —  seers,  prophets, 
captains  of  men;  and  so  it  always  will  be. 
When,  as  now,  the  greatest  crisis  in  fifteen 
centuries  overpasses  the  world,  and  society 
sinks  under  the  nemesis  of  universal  medi- 
ocrity, then  we  realize  that  the  system  has 
doomed  itself,  since,  impotent  to  produce 
leaders,  it  has  signed  its  own  death  warrant. 

[46] 


THE    NEMESIS   OF   MEDIOCRITY 

What  we  confront  through  democracy  as 
it  is  interpreted  to-day  is  a  degradation  of 
the  human  potential  through  a  double  dissi- 
pation of  energy.  With  no  defensible  stand- 
ard of  comparative  values,  all  the  spiritual 
and  mental  force  in  men  is  turned  towards 
the  realization  of  the  unimportant,  to  which 
accomplishment  it  is  given  with  a  prodigal- 
ity hardly  equalled  in  the  Middle  Ages 
when  it  was  lavished  on  the  realization  of 
the  essential.  Simultaneously  man  has  been 
dissipating  the  stored-up  energy  of  the 
world  through  his  mastery  of  thermo- 
dynamics and  his  precarious  dominion  over 
electrical  forces,  at  such  a  rate  that  physical 
potential  has  been  degraded  in  a  hundred 
years  more  than  in  the  preceding  hundred 
centuries.  Of  what  becomes  of  this  fabu- 
lous force,  what  the  permanent  contribu- 
tions may  be  to  human  life,  he  cares  little. 
It  is  sufficient  for  him  to  realize  that  he  is 
the  arbiter  of  this  gigantic  power,  and  if  it 
is  exploited  and  dissipated,  with  nothing  of 
lasting  value  to  show,  he  cares  no  more  than 
any  other  type  of  spendthrift. 

As  Henry  Adams  has  said,  with  cold 
irony,  "Neither  historians  nor  sociologists 
can  afford  to  let  themselves  be  driven  into 

[47] 


THE   NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

admitting  that  every  gain  of  power  —  from 
gunpowder  to  steam,  from  the  dynamo  to 
the  Daimler  motor  —  has  been  made  at  the 
cost  of  man's  and  of  woman's  vitality."  Yet 
the  fact  remains  that  this  is  true,  and  our 
present  deplorable  estate  is  partly  the  result 
of  this  very  degradation  and  dissipation  of 
energy,  which  has  been  lavished  on  activi- 
ties totally  unproductive  so  far  as  lasting 
benefits  are  concerned,  and  spread  out  over 
a  vast  area  where  it  disappears  without 
results. 

It  would  seem  that  there  is  in  the  world 
at  any  one  time  only  a  certain  amount  of 
available  spiritual  energy,  which  may  be 
preserved  and  made  effectively  operative 
through  concentration,  or  lost  through  dissi- 
pation, while  the  physical  energy,  stored  up 
out  of  endless  ages,  is  limited  in  its  original 
quantity,  and  only  added  to,  if  at  all,  in  a 
very  small  degree.  At  the  beginning  of 
each  new  era  this  spiritual  force  is  precipi- 
tated in  the  form  of  great  leaders  who  trans- 
late it,  and  transmit  it  in  available  form  (and 
directed  toward  productive  ends)  to  the 
general  mass  of  men.  Later,  the  specific 
era  having  reached  its  meridian,  the  leaders 
pass  as  the  prophets  before  them,  and  the 

[48] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

force  once  concentrated  in  them,  and  made 
operative,  spreads  thin  and  ineffective,  and 
at  last  is  dissipated  through  the  general 
mass  of  men.  At  the  end  the  prodigal  ma- 
jority, having  wasted  its  inherited  substance 
in  riotous  living,  falls  into  puerile  contests 
and  finally  destroys  itself,  and  another  era 
takes  its  place  in  history  to  the  accompani- 
ment of  war  and  anarchy.  So  Greece  lost 
its  leaders  and  squandered  its  intellectual 
heritage;  so  Rome  dissipated  its  Imperial 
force  and  succumbed  to  barbarism;  so  Me- 
dievalism played  fast  and  loose  with  its 
spiritual  capital,  and  so  modernism  is  now 
wasting  all  it  had  inherited  from  these  three 
antecedent  periods,  and  prepares  to  take  its 
place  with  antiquity. 

From  the  earliest  Renaissance,  great  men 
in  whom  were  concentrated  the  dynamic 
force  of  a  crescent  era,  built  up  the  impos- 
ing and  consistent  thing  called  modernism. 
Great  men  transformed  this  into  the  terms  of 
industrial  civilization,  when  they  had  given 
their  commanding  abilities  to  the  discovery 
and  the  utilization  of  the  latent  physical 
forces  inherent  in  the  world,  hitherto  un- 
touched by  antecedent  generations.  Then 
they  ceased,  almost  by  a  cataclysmic  cutting- 

[49] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

off,  and  little  men,  little  in  spirit  and  crafty 
rather  than  creative,  took  into  their  hands  the 
carrying  out  of  the  last  phase  of  epochal  de- 
velopment—  the  establishing  of  the  hegem- 
ony of  the  world  on  a  basis  of  physical  and 
intellectual  force  from  which  the  last  ele- 
ments of  morality  had  been  purged  away. 
Little  men,  blinded,  puzzled  and  appalled, 
met  the  crisis  as  best  they  could,  and  for 
three  years  the  world  has  been  plunged  in 
carnage  and  destruction,  while  military, 
political  and  psychological  blunders  have 
followed  each  other  in  a  witches'  sabbath 
of  incapacity. 

And  now  the  victory  of  the  shrewd,  cyni- 
cal and  definitely  immoral  forces,  so  long 
held  impossible  even  in  thought,  is  more 
clearly  indicated  than  at  any  time  since  the 
Battle  of  the  Marne.  The  exploits  of 
Russia  in  its  efforts  to  make  the  "world  safe 
for  democracy"  may  very  well  prove  the 
determining  factor.  A  miracle  is  of  course 
possible,  but  at  present  not  predicable.  A 
Napoleon  there,  a  Charlemagne  in  France, 
a  Washington  here,  even  a  Cromwell  in 
England,  might  avert  the  nemesis  of  medi- 
ocrity, but  a  Kerensky,  a  Painleve,  a  Lloyd 
George  does  not  fill  the  bill.    With  a  Ger- 

[50] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF    MEDIOCRITY 

man  victory  and  a  German  peace,  modern- 
ism, supreme  over  all  the  world,  may  es- 
tablish a  regime  of  mechanistic  efficiency. 
Imperial,  Godless,  temporally  superb,  but 
without  real  leaders,  it  can  only  prove  an 
interlude  of  plausibility,  a  preface  to  sud- 
den degeneration,  and  the  chaos  of  the  end 
of  the  century,  when  the  world-slavery  of 
Teutonistic  modernism  goes  down  to  its 
final  ruin,  will  leave  the  record  of  the 
present  war  as  that  of  a  mere  rehearsal. 

And  if  the  miracle  happens;  if  the  leader 
comes  who  can  shatter  the  Brumagem  effi- 
ciency of  Prussia,  and  so  the  world  is  saved 
from  a  fate  it  richly  deserves,  can  we  say 
that  we  have  a  better  hope?  Yes,  if  with 
victory  comes  realization  of  what  the  war 
means,  and  why  it  came  upon  us.  For  this 
realization  one  of  two  things  is  necessary: 
either  such  a  spiritual  regeneration  of  the 
great  mass  of  people,  through  suffering  and 
sorrow  and  privation  and  the  bitter  school- 
ing of  the  trenches,  that  they  will  follow  up 
their  victory  over  the  enemy  in  the  field  by 
an  even  greater  victory  over  the  enemy  at 
home  in  religion,  philosophy  and  society, 
purging  a  chastened  world  of  the  last  folly 
and  the  last  wickedness  of  modernism;  or 

[5i] 


THE    NEMESIS    OF   MEDIOCRITY 

the  coming  once  more  of  the  great  prophets 
and  captains  of  men  who  alone  can  lead  as 
their  predecessors  have  always  led,  and  so 
build  up  a  new  life  on  the  ruins  of  an  old 
that  has  passed  in  blood  and  flame  and 
dishonour. 

If  none  of  these  things  happens,  if  there  is 
a  German  peace,  or  an  inconclusive  "  peace 
through  negotiation,"  or  a  victory  in  the 
field  for  the  Allies  that  is  followed  by  no 
attainment  of  a  new  vision;  if  in  the  end  the 
world  returns  to  the  same  system,  the  same 
basis  of  judgment,  the  same  standard  of 
comparative  values  that  held  before  the 
war  —  what  then? 

Russia  already  has  given  the  answer. 


[52] 


POSTSCRIPT 

WRITTEN  in  the  spring  of  the  year 
1 91 8,  as  it  was,  "The  Nemesis  of 
Mediocrity  "  may  very  well  have  be- 
come superannuated  as  to  its  estimates  of 
world-leaders  by  the  time  it  was  published,  for 
events  moved  as  the  avalanche  and  years  were 
compressed  into  days.  I  have  been  asked  if  I 
should  write  differently  now,  and  criticized  for 
ignoring  some  unquestionable  leaders  whose 
glory  has  filled  the  consciousness  of  men  since 
that  mysterious  twenty-fifth  of  August,  191 8, 
when,  in  an  hour,  it  would  seem,  overwhelming 
German  victory  turned  into  inevitable  and 
crushing  defeat,  a  defeat  eternally  recorded  in 
history  ten  weeks  later  on  that  epic  Eleventh 
of  November. 

Yes,  in  one  respect  a  different  estimate  would 
be  set  down,  but  its  nature  makes  only  more 
salient  the  lack  of  real  leadership  in  the  cate- 
gories of  civil  life  and  thought.  Leadership 
in  religion  and  philosophy  is  perhaps  a  degree 
less  evident  than  it  was  nine  months  ago  and 
the  achievement  of  "  victory  without  peace  " 
instead  of  instigating  constructive  activity  along 
these  lines  seems  rather  to  have  acted  as  a  fur- 
ther deterrent.  Lenine  and  Trotsky  are  more 
to  the  front  with  a  certain  leadership  that  is  at 

[53] 


POSTSCRIPT 

least  striking,  if  one  is  disposed  to  accept  what 
they  offer  as  constituting  the  sort  of  thing  one 
has  in  mind  when  thinking  of  the  great  leaders 
of  the  past.  So  it  may  be  admitted  were  Lieb- 
knecht  and  Rosa  Luxemburg  until  their  sum- 
mary taking-off.  In  politics  and  statecraft  the 
world  on  the  one  hand  has  lost  a  real  leader  in 
Roosevelt,  while  on  the  other  a  sort  of  merger 
has  been  effected  whereby  —  for  the  moment  at 
least  —  all  issues  have  been  pooled  in  one  ex- 
traordinary Personality  who  has  become  a  kind 
of  super-leader,  universal  dictator,  Manager 
of  the  World  —  the  adequate  phrase  does  not 
suggest  itself.  That  here  is  leadership  of  Brob- 
dignagian  degree  no  one  could  deny,  but  in  a 
way  this  supersession  of  the  many  by  the  one 
would  seem  to  argue  in  favour  of  the  original 
hypothesis  that  leadership,  as  a  working  fact 
in  society  as  a  whole,  has  ceased.  Never  be- 
fore, except  perhaps  in  the  case  of  the  Dark 
Ages,  when  Charlemagne  stood  as  the  one  lone 
personality  in  the  midst  of  blank  incompetence, 
has  a  phenomenon  such  as  this  presented  itself. 
Of  the  ultimate  result  for  the  world  it  is  still 
too  early  to  venture  a  forecast.  On  the  his- 
torians of  the  far  future  must  fall  the  burden 
of  estimate. 

At  the  present  writing  this  singularity  of 
leadership  would  appear  to  be  threatened  by 
M.  Clemenceau  who  in  the  first  edition  of  this 
book  was  carelessly  referred  to  as  "  the  super- 
annuated." Again  the  word  was  hardly  de- 
scriptive, but  it  was  used  at  a  time  when  the 

[54] 


POSTSCRIPT 

once  redoubtable  "  Tiger  "  had  just  made  his 
sensational  re-entry  on  the  scene  where  he  was, 
it  appears,  destined  to  play  a  part  (at  present 
unfinished)  that  at  the  time  was  hardly  subject 
to  anticipation.  The  word  is  hereby  withdrawn 
with  sincere  apologies:  "superannuated"  he 
conspicuously  is  not.  Whether  his  astute  direc- 
tion of  baffling  affairs  is,  or  may  become,  great 
constructive  leadership  is  another  matter  not 
yet  determined.  By  the  time  this  "  Postscript  " 
is  published  not  his  alone,  but  other  salient 
claims  to  man-mastership,  may  have  been  de- 
cided either  in  the  negative  or  the  affirmative. 

There  is  one  field  however  in  which  real 
leadership  has  appeared,  manifesting  itself 
very  largely  since  this  book  was  written:  the 
field  of  action.  If  it  had  not  been  so  there 
would  have  been  no  editions  of  this  book  subse- 
quent to  the  first,  nor  of  any  other  for  that 
matter.  Barring  this  miraculous  emergence  of 
great  captains,  we  should  by  now  have  become 
a  series  of  conquered  peoples  in  vassalage  to 
Imperial  Teutonism. 

To  have  omitted  the  name  of  King  Albert 
of  Belgium  was  a  blunder,  but  it  was  of  care- 
lessness rather  than  of  false  measure.  A  great 
captain  he  is,  of  an  army  and  of  a  people,  in 
the  sense  of  all  historical  greatness;  and  the 
name  of  Marshal  Joffre  should  also  have  been 
set  down  in  reverence  and  gratitude.  Since  the 
great  Eighteenth  of  July,  men  of  action  have 
leaped  to  the  front  with  a  swiftness  that  is 
matched  only  by  quality.     Set  first  the  immortal 

[55] 


POSTSCRIPT 

name  of  Marshal  Foch,  the  Great  Captain  of 
the  Great  War,  and  then  Field  Marshal  Haig, 
Generals  Pershing,  Petain,  Allenby,  Castelnau, 
Diaz;  Admirals  Jellicoe,  Beatty,  Sims  and, 
thank  God,  many  others.  In  six  months  the 
lack  of  four  years  was  supplied,  and  had  the 
war  gone  on  another  three  months  to  the  final 
annihilation  of  the  enemy  in  the  field,  who  can 
doubt  that  the  list  would  have  run  to  four  times 
its  present  length?  The  quality  of  the  men  in 
the  trenches  was  a  glory  and  an  amazement; 
on  land  and  sea  and  in  the  air  young  officers 
were  finding  themselves  and  revealing  both 
mettle  and  character  as  never  could  have  been 
during  peace.  What  was  is  earnest  of  what 
might  have  been  —  of  what  may  be,  and  here 
lies  the  great  hope  in  a  time  of  great  doubt. 

In  the  field  of  action  leadership  at  last  has 
shown  itself.  What  democracy  and  universal 
education  and  wealth  and  science  and  indus- 
trialism had  failed  to  make  manifest  was  ham- 
mered out  on  its  hard  anvils.  Can  this  tem- 
pered steel  be  turned  from  its  original  destiny; 
can  the  fine  swords  of  the  new  men  of  action 
be  beaten  into  pruning  hooks  to  gather  the  ripe 
harvest  of  mingled  wheat  and  tares,  and  into 
ploughshares  for  the  ploughing  of  the  war- 
fields  in  preparation  for  the  greater  harvest 
that  is  to  come?  It  is  the  fateful  question  on 
whose  answer  hangs  all  the  future. 

The  peril  of  war  has  given  place  (at  least 
for  the  moment)  to  the  far  greater  peril  of  an 
untimely  "  peace  "  wherein  the  masters  of  our 

[56] 


POSTSCRIPT 

destiny  flounder  as  in  the  first  years  of  conflict. 
Paris  at  the  present  moment,  or  Europe  for 
that  matter,  can  hardly  be  called  a  centre  and 
source  of  serene  confidence.  "  Secret  diplo- 
macy "  has  yielded  to  a  confusion  of  words 
which  are  again  being  employed  with  notable 
success  for  the  concealing  of  thoughts.  Russia 
and  Germany  are  midnight  mysteries  with  no 
Sherlock  Holmes  to  probe  their  sinister  depths. 
No  one  really  knows  anything  about  anything, 
and  he  is  told  less  —  so  far  as  the  real  things 
are  concerned.  Meanwhile  the  old  influences 
become  operative  again;  the  old  two  alterna- 
tives, conservatism  and  radicalism,  or  under 
the  new  nomenclature,  reactionism  and  Bol- 
shevism, offer  themselves  as  the  only  choice, 
while  the  third  alternative  (which  always  exists 
and  is  always  right,  and  is  never  recognized 
or  victorious)  finds  neither  leaders  nor  adher- 
ents, although  the  Great  Alternatives  represent 
only  a  mean  minority  on  either  hand.  Legis- 
lation grows  more  leaderless  and  imbecile; 
ridiculous  individuals  are  increasingly  chosen 
for  important  executive  and  diplomatic  posi- 
tions; organized  religion  is  either  silent  on  the 
one  hand  or  on  the  other  offers  as  its  great  solu- 
tion the  raising  of  some  hundreds  of  millions 
for  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  blessings  of 
Methodism  or  Puritanism  to  the  benighted 
peoples  of  the  Catholic  countries;  philosophy 
is  merged  in  the  sentimental  pacifism  or  the 
parlour  Bolshevism  of  the  weekly  press;  art 
and  letters  wander  in  the  "  vast  inane  "  and  the 

[57] 


POSTSCRIPT 

feeble  gleams  of  an  old  liberty  are  extinguished 
in  the  water-floods  of  doctrinaire  legislation. 

One  is  impelled  to  pray  for  the  quick  return 
of  all  the  men  of  all  the  armies,  for  in  them 
alone  seems  the  possibility  of  salvation  through 
leadership,  if  (and  this  is  fundamental)  they 
bring  back  with  them,  operative  and  undimin- 
ished, the  vision  and  the  idea  of  justice  and  the 
good  sense  the  war  has  revealed  in  them,  and 
to  them,  when  all  else  has  failed.  Bring  them 
back  and  offer  them  in  strong  support.  With- 
out this,  the  future  is  not  entirely  clear. 

R.  A.  C. 

Boston,  12th  February,  19 19. 


[58] 


151 

or 


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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

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